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A Troubled Marriage Ends With Her Brutal Dismemberment · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture a city and not just
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: any city, but a place that for decades has really
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: actively branded itself on being, you know, pristine. Right.
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  Speaker 2: A very specific civic illusion.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. We're talking about a municipality that genuinely earned the
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: nickname Toronto the Good.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Toronto the Good. It paints a very comforting picture.
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  Speaker 1: It really does. It's this idea of a profoundly safe,
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  Speaker 1: ordered place where polite society just sort of rules.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, that's by design, right? That sort of civic
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  Speaker 2: identity is really the bedrock of community building.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, the kind of city where walking down a deserted
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  Speaker 1: street at night doesn't make you check over your shoulder.
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  Speaker 1: You picture clean sidewalks and, I don't know, a place
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  Speaker 1: where the worst thing that happens is getting a parking ticket.
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  Speaker 2: Well, people crave that predictability. You know, they want to
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  Speaker 2: raise their families in a place where the social contract
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  Speaker 2: is unbroken.
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  Speaker 1: Right, insulated from the chaos you see in the headlines
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  Speaker 1: from other major cities.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. But then you pull back the curtain and step
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  Speaker 2: into the world of a homicide investigation. And that pristine
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  Speaker 2: image shatters almost instantly.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, completely. Because when you get out of the gleaming
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  Speaker 1: downtown core, or honestly, even if you just look a
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  Speaker 1: little closer at the shadows between the skyscrapers, Toronto the
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  Speaker 1: Good gives way to some incredibly dark realities.
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  Speaker 2: It creates a really jarring contrast for anyone working in
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  Speaker 2: law enforcement there.
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  Speaker 1: Because violent crime doesn't care about a city's nickname, right?
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  Speaker 2: No, it really doesn't.
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  Speaker 1: No.
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  Speaker 2: For a homicide detective, the safe streets and the polite society,
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  Speaker 2: that's just a veneer.
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  Speaker 1: A veneer covering up the same human frailties, the same
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  Speaker 1: volatile emotions.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. The same capacities for violence that exist everywhere else.
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  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the actual mission of today's Deep Dive.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: We are unpacking a massive stack of source material surrounding
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: a 1992 true crime investigation.
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  Speaker 2: And it is an incredibly complex one. It really is.
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  Speaker 1: Our goal isn't just to tell a story here. We
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  Speaker 1: want you to understand the actual mechanics of how forensic
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  Speaker 1: science and old-school, boots-on-the-ground detective work had to interlock.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they really had to combine to solve a puzzle
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  Speaker 2: that looked, I mean, completely unsolvable on its face.
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  Speaker 1: We are looking at a dismembered body, an untouchable suspect,
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  Speaker 1: and a marriage so deeply toxic it honestly defies logic.
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  Speaker 2: The complexity of the forensic hurdles in this specific investigation...
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  Speaker 2: It's just staggering.
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  Speaker 1: I am so fascinated by the forensic puzzle ahead. It's incredible.
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  Speaker 2: It is. But if we pull back, the grounding principle
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  Speaker 2: driving every single test, every wiretap, every grueling search we're
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: going to discuss today, it's a fundamental duty. Investigators and
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: forensic pathologists operate on a very stark philosophy. Their job
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  Speaker 2: is to speak for the dead in order to protect
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: the living.
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  Speaker 1: Speak for the dead to protect the living. That is
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  Speaker 1: the engine pushing this entire case forward.
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  Speaker 2: It absolutely is.
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  Speaker 1: And the puzzle they had to put together to speak
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  Speaker 1: for this victim is just incredible. So let's set the
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  Speaker 1: physical scene for you.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: We need to travel to the Burlington Bridge.
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  Speaker 1: Right. This is a colossal piece of infrastructure connecting the
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  Speaker 1: greater Toronto area to the Niagara region. It towers right
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  Speaker 1: over the western tip of Lake Ontario.
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  Speaker 2: We're talking about a massive drop, 200 feet from the
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  Speaker 2: concrete road surface down to the water below.
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  Speaker 1: And it's January. So the wind off the lake is biting.
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  Speaker 1: The water is near freezing. And down below this massive bridge,
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  Speaker 1: right along the industrial ship canal, there are some children
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  Speaker 1: playing by the water's edge.
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  Speaker 2: Which is terrifying, knowing what they're about to find.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. They stumble upon something straight out of a nightmare.
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  Speaker 1: They found a severed human leg that had just washed
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  Speaker 1: up against the shore.
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  Speaker 2: I cannot even... process the trauma of being a kid
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  Speaker 2: on a Tuesday afternoon and finding a human limb.
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  Speaker 1: I know.
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  Speaker 2: It's horrifying.
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  Speaker 1: So the call goes out to the police, and one
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  Speaker 1: of the first detectives to arrive on this freezing shore
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  Speaker 1: is Detective Mark Mendelsohn.
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  Speaker 2: And the sources emphasize how he approached the scene, which
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  Speaker 2: is crucial.
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  Speaker 1: Right. He walks down to the water, looks at this
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  Speaker 1: grisly discovery, and makes a really important observation. He talks
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  Speaker 1: extensively about the absolute necessity of viewing a body or
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  Speaker 1: a body part in situ.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, in situ.
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  Speaker 1: Break down why that is so critical before anyone even
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  Speaker 1: touches the evidence.
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  Speaker 2: Well, in situ is just the Latin term for in
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  Speaker 2: its original place. But in forensic science, it's everything.
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  Speaker 1: It's the whole context.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. If you're a homicide detective, the worst thing you
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  Speaker 2: can do is wait for the remains to show up
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  Speaker 2: in a sterile morgue. You have to see it exactly
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: where the world left it.
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  Speaker 1: Because you're looking at how it interacts with the environment, right?
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  Speaker 2: Right. You were looking at the integrate relationship between the
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  Speaker 2: organic remains and the surroundings. Like, how is the tide
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  Speaker 2: interacting with it? Are there drag marks in the sand?
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  Speaker 1: What kind of debris is wrapped around it?
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  Speaker 2: Yes. Is it tangled in native weeds or, you know,
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  Speaker 2: industrial garbage?
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  Speaker 1: Because if you just wait for it to be dropped
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  Speaker 1: on a stainless steel table under fluorescent lights, you've essentially
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  Speaker 1: erased all that environmental data.
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  Speaker 2: You've lost the context.
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  Speaker 1: It's like trying to read a book where someone ripped
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  Speaker 1: out the first chapter. You have no idea how it started.
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  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy. That environmental context often tells you
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  Speaker 2: how the remains arrived at that specific location. And that
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  Speaker 2: can point you toward where they actually entered the water.
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  Speaker 1: So when Detective Mendelson stands on that freezing shore and
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  Speaker 1: looks at this lake in situ, his years of experience
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  Speaker 1: immediately filter out the noise.
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  Speaker 2: He sees the size of the limb, he sees the
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  Speaker 2: condition of the flesh, and he knows definitively that this
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  Speaker 2: is not a case of natural disarticulation.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, wait. Natural disarticulation.
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  Speaker 2: I'm assuming that means the body didn't just, like, fall
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  Speaker 2: apart on its own from floating around in the lake. Exactly.
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  Speaker 2: Connective tissue, the ligaments, tendons, and cartilage that hold our
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  Speaker 2: joints together, eventually breaks down when a body decomposes in water.
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  Speaker 1: From the water movement and stuff.
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  Speaker 2: From the constant motion of the currents combined with bacterial action, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It weakens those connections, and limbs can detach naturally at
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  Speaker 2: the joints.
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  Speaker 1: But Mendelsohn could see that the separation point on this
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  Speaker 1: leg was entirely wrong for that process.
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  Speaker 2: This wasn't a joint that had weakened and slipped apart.
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  Speaker 2: This was a forced, unnatural separation right through the middle
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  Speaker 2: of the bone.
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  Speaker 1: So they know they need a medical expert on this immediately.
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  Speaker 1: Enter Dr. David King.
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  Speaker 2: You know, we really have to pause and look at Dr.
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  Speaker 2: King's resume here.
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  Speaker 1: Because it is difficult to wrap your head around. This
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  Speaker 1: is a forensic pathologist who at the time had performed
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  Speaker 1: over 9,000 autopsies.
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  Speaker 2: 9,000 human bodies.
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  Speaker 1: I am just trying to imagine what that level of
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  Speaker 1: exposure to human mortality does to a person's brain. You know,
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  Speaker 1: how much raw anatomical data he has cataloged.
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  Speaker 2: The sheer volume of pattern recognition he possesses is his
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  Speaker 2: greatest asset.
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  Speaker 1: Right. You might assume that after the first few thousand autopsies,
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  Speaker 1: a pathologist would become completely desensitized.
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  Speaker 2: Like it turns into a mechanical assembly line process.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But Dr. King's underlying philosophy is the exact opposite.
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  Speaker 2: He approaches every single body bag as an entirely new,
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  Speaker 2: unsolved mystery. He views his work not just as a
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  Speaker 2: medical procedure, but as a quest for objective truth.
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  Speaker 1: And when he unzips the bag and looks at this leg,
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  Speaker 1: which has been divided right at the mid-thigh... His first
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  Speaker 1: mandate is to figure out the nature of the death. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Is this a tragic accident, a suicide, or are we
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  Speaker 2: looking at a murder?
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  Speaker 1: And the location plays a massive role in their initial hypothesis.
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  Speaker 1: Because the Burlington Bridge, due to its 200-foot height, is, tragically,
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  Speaker 1: a known location for suicides.
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  Speaker 2: Hitting the water from that elevation is catastrophic to the
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  Speaker 2: human body. It is almost certainly fatal upon impact.
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  Speaker 1: Plus, the local police were actively dealing with a missing
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  Speaker 1: persons report regarding a man who had been witnessed jumping
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  Speaker 1: off that specific bridge just weeks earlier.
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  Speaker 2: But his body hadn't surfaced yet.
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  Speaker 1: So the detectives are doing basic math. We have a
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  Speaker 1: missing man who jumped, and now we have a leg
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  Speaker 1: washed up directly below the bridge.
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  Speaker 2: It seems like a logical conclusion at first glance.
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  Speaker 1: It does, but I'm stuck on the physics of that. Like,
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  Speaker 1: hitting water from 200 feet is brutal, but does it
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  Speaker 1: just pop a leg off mid-thigh? No. No.
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  Speaker 2: An impact with water wouldn't sever a femur mid-shaft like that.
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  Speaker 1: So how did they explain the cut?
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  Speaker 2: That's why the investigators developed the propeller theory.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, because of the ship canal. Right.
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  Speaker 2: The ship canal beneath the bridge is a major artery
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  Speaker 2: for massive industrial freighters passing between the lakes.
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  Speaker 1: So the working theory was that the suicide victim's body
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  Speaker 1: was submerged in the canal, a freighter passed over it,
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  Speaker 1: and the massive, churning blades of the ship's propeller struck
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  Speaker 1: the body and severed the leg.
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  Speaker 2: Which makes logical sense, based on the geography. You have
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  Speaker 2: deep water, heavy shipping traffic, and a missing body.
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  Speaker 1: But here's where Dr. King's 9,000 autopsies change everything, because
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  Speaker 1: the theory sounds perfectly fine until you actually put the
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  Speaker 1: bone under a bright light.
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  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how the physical evidence completely contradicts
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  Speaker 2: the story.
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  Speaker 1: It's like assuming a tree branch snapped in a storm,
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  Speaker 1: but then you look closely and see chainsaw marks.
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  Speaker 2: That is exactly it. The theory has to survive the
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  Speaker 2: physical reality of the tissue. And in this case, it
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  Speaker 2: didn't even come close.
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  Speaker 1: Dr. King examines the cut end of the femur, right,
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  Speaker 1: which is the thickest, strongest bone in the human body.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, and he doesn't see the chaotic, blunt force trauma
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  Speaker 2: of a propeller. He sees distinct, visible saw marks.
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  Speaker 1: But how different does a propeller strike look from a
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  Speaker 1: saw cut? I mean, aren't they both just metal blades
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  Speaker 1: hitting bone?
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  Speaker 2: The physics of the two events are wildly different. A
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  Speaker 2: ship's propeller is massive, blunt, and moving with immense kinetic energy.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not a clean slice.
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  Speaker 2: Not at all. It doesn't cut. It crushes, tears, and shears. Dr.
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  Speaker 2: King compared a propeller strike to a shark bite.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. A shark bite. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It causes ragged, violent tearing of the muscle and explosive
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  Speaker 2: fracturing of the bone.
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  Speaker 1: Whereas a saw?
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  Speaker 2: A saw is a handheld tool with microteeth designed to
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  Speaker 2: remove material in a controlled line.
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  Speaker 1: You're guiding it.
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  Speaker 2: You're applying deliberate back-and-forth physical control. Precisely. The resulting cut
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  Speaker 2: through the bone is straight, clean, and entirely deliberate.
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  Speaker 1: So Dr. King looked at the flat plane of the
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  Speaker 1: severed femur, noted the specific striations left by the teeth
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  Speaker 1: of a blade, and immediately knew this was not a
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  Speaker 1: tragic accident in the canal. Right.
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  Speaker 2: This was a highly suspicious, calculated dismemberment. Someone had intentionally
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  Speaker 2: cut this victim apart.
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  Speaker 1: He picks up the phone, calls the coroner, and says,
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  Speaker 1: We don't have a suicide. We have a murder.
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  Speaker 2: And the sources describe the aftermath of that phone call
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  Speaker 2: as absolute chaos.
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  Speaker 1: Org travels fast across all the police divisions in the
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  Speaker 1: greater Toronto area. Any detective who has an open missing
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  Speaker 1: person case where body parts are unaccounted for just rushes
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: to the morgue.
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  Speaker 2: You have desperate families demanding to know if this leg
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  Speaker 2: belongs to their loved one.
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  Speaker 1: But think about the sheer biological challenge Dr. King is
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  Speaker 1: facing here. He has a leg. No head for dental records.
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  Speaker 1: No hands for fingerprints. How do you figure out who
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  Speaker 1: the leg belongs to without a face?
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: A single limb might seem like a dead-end device. But
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: to a forensic pathologist, the human body is a vast
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  Speaker 2: archive of demographic data.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So he can still read it?
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. Every tissue, every bone density, every fat deposit
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  Speaker 2: tells a story about who that person was and how
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  Speaker 2: they lived. So Dr.
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  Speaker 1: King's immediate objective is to extract enough biological metadata to
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  Speaker 1: give those frantic detectives a usable profile. They need something
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: to narrow down their missing persons lists.
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  Speaker 2: And he starts from the outside and works his way in. Visually,
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  Speaker 2: he notes the size. It's a large, long leg.
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  Speaker 1: Pigmentation indicates it belongs to a white person.
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  Speaker 2: But then he looks at the actual cross-section where the
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: leg was severed, specifically the tissue composition.
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  Speaker 1: And this blew my mind when I was reading the sources.
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  Speaker 1: He could tell the sex of the victim just from
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the fat.
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  Speaker 2: It really comes down to statistical variations in human biology.
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  Speaker 2: and how different bodies store energy.
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  Speaker 1: So what exactly did he see?
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  Speaker 2: Dr. King analyzed the ratio of subcutaneous fatty tissue to
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  Speaker 2: muscular tissue at the mid-thigh.
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  Speaker 1: Subcutaneous fat is the layer that sits directly beneath the skin, right?
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  Speaker 2: Yes. Statistically, female bodies tend to store a higher proportion
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  Speaker 2: of their fat subcutaneously, particularly in the lower body, the hips,
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  Speaker 2: and the thighs.
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  Speaker 1: Compared to male bodies, which might store more visceral fat
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: or just have a higher baseline of muscle density in
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: those specific areas.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. So he's looking at the cross section, seeing a
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: very thick layer of fat relative to the muscle, and
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  Speaker 2: his brain just registers female.
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  Speaker 1: Based on the pronounced thickness of that specific fat layer,
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  Speaker 1: he felt confident stating that the victim was statistically highly
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: likely to be a female. Right.
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  Speaker 2: So we have a large white female. That narrows the
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: pool considerably.
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  Speaker 1: But a 20-year-old and a 60-year-old can both be large
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  Speaker 1: white females. He needs an age range. And he finds
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: it hidden inside the joints in something called the epiphysis.
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  Speaker 2: This is a great forensic detail.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Walk me through the mechanics of that. How does a
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: bone tell time?
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: To understand the epiphysis, you have to look at how
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: human bones grow. A long bone, like the femur, isn't
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: just a solid stick of calcium that gets uniformly bigger.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: The main shaft of the bone is called the diaphysis.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: The ends of the bone, where it meets the joints
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  Speaker 2: like the knee or the hip, are the epiphyses.
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  Speaker 1: And during childhood and your teenage years, those ends are
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: separated from the main shaft by a layer of cartilage,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: which is commonly known as the growth plate.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: That's where the actual lengthening of the bone happens. The
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: cartilage expands and then hardens into bone.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: But that process eventually stops, right?
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  Speaker 2: It does. As you enter your late teens and early 20s,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: that growth stops. The cartilage completely ossifies. It turns to bone.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: And the epiphyses fuse solidly to the main shaft.
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  Speaker 1: So the seam where they meet eventually becomes practically invisible.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And when Dr. King examined the joints of this
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: severed leg, he observed that the fusion was absolute and complete.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: So there was zero trace of a growth plate left.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: None whatsoever. The bones were fully mature. This allowed him
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: to definitively rule out a child, a teenager... Or even
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: a very young adult.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Combined with the wear and tear he could observe on
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: the joint surfaces, he deduced this was an older adult.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Right. So they have the demographic profile. An older, large,
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: white female.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: But the detectives still need one more vital piece of
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: data to check against their missing persons files. They need
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: a timestamp.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Because if she went missing a week ago, but the
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: leg has been dead for six months, it's not a match.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: This is where the freezing January weather completely alters the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: forensic landscape. Discuss the crucial role of the environment here.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: The environment completely dictates the speed of decomposition. Right.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: If you leave organic tissue in a warm, humid environment,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: it breaks down fast.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Exponentially fast. The bacteria inside the body multiply, enzymes begin
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: breaking down the cells, and putrefaction happens rapidly.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Which makes estimating the time of death incredibly difficult because
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the destruction is so chaotic.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: But Lake Ontario in January is basically a massive ice bath.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: It acts like a giant cryogenic chamber, right?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The icy January waters acted like a refrigerator. The
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: near-freezing temperature of the water drastically suppressed the bacterial growth
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: and halted the enzymatic breakdown.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: So when Dr. King looked at the tissues of the leg,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: the typical signs of aquatic decomposition like skin slippage, Massive bloating,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: severe discoloration, they were remarkably minimal.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: It's essentially like putting meat in the freezer instead of
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: leaving it on the counter.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Based on his vast experience observing how human tissue reacts
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: to freezing water over specific durations, Dr. King evaluated the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: subtle changes that had occurred.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: And he provided a crucial estimate. He told investigators that
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: this leg had likely been in the water for roughly
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: one month.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So we have a tight scientific profile, an older, large,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: white female who likely died roughly a month prior to
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the January discovery.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: And finding a match on paper is one thing. But
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: as the investigators pull the thread, they hit a wall.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Well, let's introduce Detective Tony Warr first. He's a seasoned
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: homicide detective, working homicide since 1980.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Very experienced.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: He genuinely loves the complex, silent puzzles of murder investigations.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Because the victim can't speak, the detective has to translate
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the clues.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: And sitting on Tony Ward's desk is a missing persons
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: file that perfectly aligns with Dr. King's profile.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: The file belongs to a woman named Nicole Madison. Let's
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: look at the victim profile.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: The alignment is uncanny. Nicole Madison was 52 years old.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: She stood 5 foot 10 inches tall and was heavily built.
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  Speaker 1: She was a mother, a grandmother, and notably she was
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: a tough corrections officer.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, a profession that requires a certain level of physical
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: and mental toughness.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And the most important part, the timeline.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: She went missing exactly one month ago, on December 2nd.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: The one-month window Dr. King estimated was a perfect match
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: to the day she vanished. Finding a match on paper
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: is one thing, right? But as the investigators pull the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: thread on Nicole's life, they encounter a massive obstacle. Her husband.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: The complication here is immense. The man who filed the
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: missing persons report for Nicole was her husband, David Madison.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: And David Madison wasn't just a civilian. He was an
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: active duty police sergeant working out of 52 Division in Toronto.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: He's a cop. A sergeant.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: If we connect this to the bigger picture, investigating a
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: fellow officer has to completely warp the dynamic of a
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: homicide squad. You're dealing with the blue wall of silence,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: internal politics.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture... Investigating one
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: of your own fundamentally destabilizes the process. Police rely heavily
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: on a culture of absolute trust to survive dangerous situations.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So turning the lens on one of your own feels
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: like a betrayal.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: It does. Furthermore, a police sergeant is highly trained in
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: criminal law, evidence collection, and interrogation techniques.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: They know the playbook.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Because they wrote it. They know exactly how long it
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: takes to get a search warrant, They know what kind
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: of physical evidence a lab can actually test.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: They know how to handle an interview. The burden of
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: proof feels heavier because of that position of trust.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: But investigators have to remind themselves that a badge does
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: not eradicate human frailties. Officers are subject to the same rage, jealousy,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: and dark impulses as anyone else.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: So Detective Warr has to navigate this minefield. He starts
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: looking into the reality of David and Nicole's marriage.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: And what he finds is not just a rough patch.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: No. They had been married for 30 years, originally meeting
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: in France while David was in the military. But three
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: decades later, the police sources call it a marriage of
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: pure hatred.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Pure hatred.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: When seasoned investigators use that term, they are describing a
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: highly escalated, volatile dynamic.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Neither one gave an inch.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: It was so toxic that Nicole actually moved 80 miles
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: away to a town called Font Hill to start over.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: And she called her new house her fortress.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: A fortress is a defensive structure. She was barricading herself
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: against him.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: She even gave a close friend $ 5, 000 in cash and
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: a letter just in case something happened to her.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, David is doing everything he can to torture her. her.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: He's openly taunting her with his ongoing affair.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: They were even forced to see a marriage counselor, and
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: the counselor explicitly warned the police that one of them
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: was going to kill the other one.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We have this pressure cooker of
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: a marriage, Nicole vanishes, and David offers up a highly
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: suspicious alibi for December 2nd.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: It's an alibi that is so cinematic it almost feels
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: like a joke.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Right. David claims they were arguing all day in the car,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: stopped in traffic at the insanely busy downtown intersection of
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Spadina and King.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Spadina and King is the epicenter of urban chaos in Toronto.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: And he claims Nicole got so angry she violently smashed
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: the passenger side window of their car and just walked
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: off into the crowd.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: At 2 p.m. on a weekday.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And wait, it gets crazier. He claims he waited 19
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: days to report her missing.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: 19 days. And he casually suggested to detectives that she
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: probably jumped into Niagara Falls or off the Burlington Bridge.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: He is trying to orchestrate the investigation from the suspect's chair.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Detective Horst sees right through it, but they can't just
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: accuse a fellow cop based on bad vibes.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: They need concrete scientific proof that the leg in the
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: morgue belongs to Nicole Madison.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: So they hit a scientific hurdle.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Dr. King finds microscopic traces of blood in the leg.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: It's the same blood type as Nicole's. But that's not enough,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: is it?
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: No, blood typing is just an exclusionary tool. To definitively
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: link that severed flesh to the name Nicole Madison, they
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: needed a DNA profile.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: And in 1992, DNA testing took months. Plus, they didn't
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: even have Nicole's DNA on file.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: The absence of a baseline sample meant they had to
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: build her DNA profile from scratch.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Which meant sending a French-speaking officer all the way to
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: France to get blood samples from her parents and siblings
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: to build a cross-match.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: The logistical friction is just immense.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: And while they are waiting months for these DNA results,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: the police can't just sit around.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: They need more evidence. So divers searched the dark, freezing
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: ship canal looking for more of Nicole.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: The conditions were described as organized confusion.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Freezing water, zero visibility.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: They are groping through rusted shopping carts, old trees, bikes,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: and garbage.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: It is grueling, slow-motion work.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: And finally, they find a body. Fully intact. The detectives
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: think they've cracked the case, but as they pull it up,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: it's a male body.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: It turns out to be the man who jumped off
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: the bridge a month earlier.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: The actual suicide victim, whose missing body spawned the propeller theory.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: It feels like a massive setback.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, though, because to Dr. King,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: this disappointing find actually became a forensic goldmine. Wait, how
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: does a random suicide victim help them catch a killer?
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Because there were eyewitnesses to the man jumping, Dr. King
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: knew his exact time of death. Oh, wow.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: He had a biological stopwatch.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. By comparing the subcutaneous tissues of the man's thigh
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: with Nicole's severed leg, Dr. King confirmed the identical lack
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: of decomposition.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: So the random guy was an accidental control subject.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. This perfectly validated the one-month timeline. It scientifically locked
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: the leg to the exact day Nicole vanished.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: With the timeline locked, detectives shift their focus to obliterating
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: David Madison's alibi. They set up a command post at
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Spadina and King.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: They interview pedestrians, hot dog vendors, daily commuters.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And the conclusion?
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Nobody saw a woman smash a car window in gridlock
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: traffic at 2 p.m. The alibi is a lie.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: So detectives secure judicial authorization to intercept David's calls and
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: track his patterns with surveillance.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: The goal isn't just to find him, but to understand
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: his behavior, right?
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: They are building a real-time psychological profile of his post-defense behavior.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, they find Nicole's abandoned car.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: David claims she jumped out of it. It's found in
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: a cornfield miles north of the city, partially burned.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: A burned car is a massive escalation. But David, being
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a cop... Blames his young grandson playing with matches.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Which is a remarkably convenient excuse.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: But the reality? Detectives find a newspaper flyer rolled like
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: a wick, stuffed between the seats. It was a failed
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: arson attempt by David.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: And here is the fascinating thing about fire. People think
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: it magically erases everything.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Right, but the killer thought he was covering his tracks
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: when in reality he preserved them.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Because the fire was starved of oxygen in the closed car.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: It choked itself out.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: And using magnifying glasses, detectives find microscopic blood spatter and
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: a single blonde hair hidden in the trunk.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Finding microscopic blood in the trunk confirms she was bleeding
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: heavily and transported in that car.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: But how does the killer get from shooting his wife
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to a severed leg? The answer lies in the tool
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: he used.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question. How do you link a
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: tool to a bone?
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how does a saw leave a signature?
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Every saw leaves a unique microscopic signature or striations on bone,
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: just like a fingerprint. You can tell an electric saw
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: from a handsaw from an axe.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: So Dr. King examines the cut femur and reads it
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: like a barcode, and he finds traces of blue paint
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: embedded in the bone.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Concluding the killer likely used a blue-painted hacksaw. The hunt
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: for the hacksaw is on.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Police search David's Toronto home. No saw, but they find
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: wiped blood spatter on the inside of the garage door.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: White blood indicates a deliberate cleanup effort.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Then they search Nicole's Fonthill home for a week. They
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: find blood spatter on the back wall of the garage.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: So Detective War constructs a theory.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: David backed the car into the Fonthill garage, put her
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: bleeding body in the trunk, drove to Toronto, and dismembered
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: her in his own garage.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Using bone marrow extracted from the severed leg, which preserves
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: DNA even during decomposition, scientists confirmed the blood in the homes,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: the car, and the leg all belonged to the same person.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: It's an airtight, circumstantial case. But investigators are still waiting
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: for the DNA from France to prove the identity. Until
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the lake gives up another secret. A second body part
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: washes ashore.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: A left arm from a white female.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: And Dr. King notices something specific on the hand. Adipocere.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Adipocere is a fascinating forensic phenomenon. Because it was cold
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: and damp, the tissues under the skin of the hand
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: formed a waxy, soap-like change.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Grave wax, right? Yes.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: This acts as a forensic timestamp, confirming the arm went
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: into the water at the same time as the leg.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: And the signatures match. Dr. King finds the same saw
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: marks and the same blue paint on the upper arm bone.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: The physical confirmation is overwhelming.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? When Dr. King looks
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: at the hand, he sees a chilling detail. The fingertips
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: of the left hand had been intentionally cut off.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: It is a profound, deeply disturbing indicator of the killer's
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: forensic awareness.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: It's sheer cold calculation.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: The killer specifically tried to thwart fingerprint identification.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: He was trying to erase her existence down to the
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: dermal ridges of her fingers.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: But finally, the French DNA arrives.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: The cross-match is complete. The odds of the leg belonging
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: to anyone other than Nicole Madison are two billion to one.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Armed with undeniable science, they finally have what they need
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: to take down one of their own.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: On March 26, 1992, detectives arrest Sergeant David Madison at
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: his girlfriend's house.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: And note his lack of shock. He was expecting them.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: To the surprise of investigators, David actually confesses.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Likely because the guilt and the tightening net left him
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: no room to maneuver.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: He claims they argued in Font Hill, she came at
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: him with a knife, and he shot her in the
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: chest with his service revolver in self-defense.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: But then he detailed the cover-up.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Right, he admits he re-drywalled the house to hide the
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: bullet holes, wrapped his garage in plastic to catch the
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: blood from the dismemberment, dropped the.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Parts in the canal in separate bags, and set the
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: car on fire himself.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: But because there were reports of Nicole being violent in
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the past, police had no way to disprove his claim
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: of self-defense against a knife.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: So, though charged with first-degree murder, David pleaded guilty to
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: manslaughter and received a 10-year sentence.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: It reflects the bittersweet nature of the justice system here.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: They got the man, but the lack of an eyewitness
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: meant they couldn't definitively prove it was premeditated murder over self-defense.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: The science did everything it could, but the legal technicality
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: dictated the final verdict.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: The core theme here is the incredible tandem of a
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: relentless homicide detective and a brilliant forensic pathologist.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Without Dr. King's 9,000 autopsies worth of experience, a blue
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: paint chip, and the accidental discovery of a different body,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: David Madison might have gotten away with it.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Which leaves us with a chilling final thought to mull over.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Killers often think they are in total control when they
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: destroy evidence.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: Cutting off fingertips, setting fires, wiping down walls.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: But what they don't realize is that the universe of
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: microscopic biology, a single drop of blood in a trunk,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: a trace of paint on a bone, or the cold
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: water acting as a silent timekeeper, is always watching. And
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: it never forgets. Thank you for joining us on this
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: deep dive. Stay curious out there.